Harmonic Tremors of Human Violence

Red faced. Eyes bulging — nearly on the verge of tears. Tears he probably can’t shed, perhaps because it was beaten out of him that men do not cry, ever. Perhaps because this is what he preaches at home — to not back down and not be wrong, ever. Because that’s for losers and snowflakes and he sure as shit ain’t one of those. The veins are sticking out from his neck. This guy is pissed. He’s screaming something to an hourly worker. Making a scene. I’m just here to buy some coffee, dude, I think to myself. I’m trying not to look. But I can’t help myself. There’s something about witnessing public spectacles when you’re not the center of the attention. I feel bad for these workers, but they seem to have it under control. Dude’s getting asked to leave. What was I here for again? Coffee. Alright, show’s over — let’s move on.

As someone who struggles with anger, there’s a part of me that commiserates. Mostly I vent by yelling obscenities at the cars in front me who make silly mistakes. This is petty. I know this. But I’ve come a long way from where I was when I was much younger — when, embarrassingly, I’d be prone to swing at some drywall or bang my fists on the counter. Too cowardly to aim my anger at something that could feel it. Too insecure, immature, and emotionally unavailable to deal with it in a level-headed way.

What if that guy had a gun? Here we go again. My mind just won’t let it go. I’ve been reading too many stories lately about scenes like this. Some scenes end like the one above: the Angered One is denied service and leaves with threats of litigation; the Underpaid gets back to their daily grind with a fun story to tell in the break room. But other scenes don’t end that way.

Like one that happened in dear old Flint, Michigan — close to my old stomping grounds. Here a security guard denied service to a mother and child over not wearing a face mask in a Family Dollar. This was in the middle of a global pandemic, afterall. The mother felt “disrespected.” She yelled at the guard, spit on him. Took her child and left. And then returned with her husband and two others 20 minutes later to gun the guard down. Rumble.

Or another Michigan incident — this one not virus related — where a white suburbanite woman drew a gun on another lady (who happened to be black) because she had slapped the white woman’s precious SUV over some petty dispute outside a coffee shop. If you’ve seen the video, you can see the absolute terror in this white woman’s eyes. You can practically watch her mind racing as it’s determining fight or flight. Fight — pull the trigger and gun her “aggressor” down. Flight — return to the car; get away. An angel and a devil pulling on her shoulders. This goes on for maybe thirty seconds.

As an objective viewer, you know the white woman’s life isn’t in danger. It’s exactly the opposite, in fact, as a seemingly petty and non-physical confrontation (unless you call hitting an inanimate vehicle physical) has turned near-deadly. What was the grievance that started this? If If I recall, the white woman had loosely been called out as a racist. Okay — but how does drawing a firearm under this kind of accusation prove otherwise? Rumble, rumble.

And then, of course, there are the incidents of violence that erupted after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, suffocating him to death — all while it was filmed by onlookers and all while at least two other officers stood idly by. Even as of the date of this writing, the violence is still ongoing. Whatever remedy may be available still hasn’t been offered up, at least not in a meaningful way. The core grievance of the protests — the unchecked and nearly uncontrollable scope of police power and its systemic corruption — now getting lost in the violence (particularly important because several protests, maybe even the majority, were peaceful), getting lost in pittances of remediation, coming in the form of the loss of several corporate mascots and some empty words from political gas bags on all sides of the aisle who are all so far away from the pulse of this country’s heart and soul as to actually give a shit about what’s happening in the streets.

This one more of an actual earthquake; less of a simple rumble.

And Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned.

I’m craving a solution; a safe exit out. I wish I could pinpoint the origin of scenes and incidents like these to sometime in early March 2020. Or even to late 2016.But this has been happening for much longer. 1992? 1964? 1921? 1861? Back farther still. 1840? 1776? 1492? The human story is simply a pressure cooker and history gets made when it bubbles over.

Which is why I can’t help but think I’m witnessing the harmonic rumblings preceding a volcanic eruption. If you recall your third grade geo class, volcanoes erupt because of density and pressure. As a simplistic analogy — anger here is the magma, slowly getting more and more concentrated. Pressure building up. Individuals looking, consciously or not, for some kind of pressure valve and release. Violence as lava.

I think about Langston Hughes “Harlem” and then my mind drifts back to that analogy. There’s something terrifying about volcanoes (talk about understatement). Maybe in part it’s in the obvious way that we know they’re inherently dangerous but we don’t know exactly when they’re going to explode. Maybe we also know that we ourselves are inherently dangerous when push comes to shove. One thing about volcanoes though — it’s not lava that does the most damage. It’s the fallout from the ash.

I remember reading about Pompei in grade school. I don’t know if this is the same for me as for others, but that story has always stuck with me. The Big One happened in 79 A.D. I always thought the eruption killed everyone — but historians believe it only killed 2000 (“only”). Others had time to flee. Witnesses described the cloud of smoke and ash rising above Vesuvius. When it settled it acted almost like a vinegar or salt — preserving the city practically intact.

I think back to the angry man in the store. I think about the violence I’ve read about; “experienced” through video and social media only. Part of me feels grateful that I’ve not been directly affected by it; part of me feels shameful for not doing anything except acting as a passive witness. Should I have done something when I witnessed this man’s violence? All I did was watch it happen and then, smug with the thought that I was glad it wasn’t me who was causing the scene and it wasn’t me who had to directly deal with it, I walked away to get my coffee beans. Was this a tremor? Maybe it’s more than that.

Now at home, I grind up some beans and put the kettle on so I can brew a fresh cup of joe. Before too long, the kettle begins to sing.

I remove it from the burner. Try to convince myself that this is too big for any one person to meditate on, let alone solve. We can’t move mountains, after all.

But that’s not necessarily true, is it?

I think the question is more a matter of whether it’s too late.